{"id":2295,"date":"2012-12-28T10:04:26","date_gmt":"2012-12-28T15:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/?p=2295"},"modified":"2012-12-28T10:04:26","modified_gmt":"2012-12-28T15:04:26","slug":"william-voegeli-not-leveling-with-us-claremont-review-of-books-summer-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/william-voegeli-not-leveling-with-us-claremont-review-of-books-summer-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"William Voegeli, “Not Leveling With Us,” Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Source: NLT.Ashbrook.org<\/p><\/div>\n

In his review of two books on inequality in America, William Voegeli <\/a>writes:<\/p>\n

The claim that the present degree of economic inequality is undemocratic and un-American becomes dubious if the people supposedly hurt by inequality are more acquiescent than outraged. Occupy Wall Street appears to have catalyzed nothing but drum circles, even as 2011’s furious demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin, succeeded only in giving Governor Scott Walker a bigger victory when his opponents tried to recall him from office than he received when first elected. How can inequality be an affront to democracy if the demos reacts to it with a shrug?\u00a0The explanation does not appear to be a refusal to accept that the rich are getting richer. The evidence on this point, presented in both books, is strong.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And,<\/p>\n

Income inequality used to be large, then diminished, then stayed about the same for a while, and subsequently increased. How does inequality, per se, harm those whose share of total income declines? To ask the question in that way is to distinguish inequality, on the one hand, from poverty and economic insecurity, on the other. (Poverty and insecurity are two sides of the same coin, in that we want people who are poor to have ample opportunities to escape poverty, and people who aren’t poor to have ample opportunities to avoid it.) In a stagnant economy more inequality will inevitably mean more poverty and insecurity, since wealth necessarily causes poverty in that no-growth, zero-sum dystopia.\u00a0In a growing economy, however, your gain does not have to be my loss. (According to my calculations from Census Bureau and Office of Management and Budget data, America’s per capita Gross Domestic Product was $25,731 in 1979, when the Great Divergence began, and $42,215 in 2011, a 64% increase. To factor out inflation, the amounts are expressed in terms of the dollar’s value in 2005.) Both of our incomes can increase in a dynamic economy. Even if yours grows more rapidly than mine, mine still grows. A smaller slice of a bigger pie could leave more on my plate than I formerly had with a bigger slice of a smaller pie.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read more at\u00a0http:\/\/www.claremont.org\/publications\/crb\/id.1991\/article_detail.asp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his review of two books on inequality in America, William Voegeli writes: The claim that the present degree of economic inequality is undemocratic and un-American becomes dubious if the people supposedly hurt by inequality are more acquiescent than outraged. Occupy Wall Street appears to have catalyzed nothing but drum circles, even as 2011’s furious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[143],"tags":[153],"class_list":["post-2295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting-read","tag-claremont-review-of-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBCzY-B1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2295"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2298,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295\/revisions\/2298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}